Maria Steen
The View
No longer can Ireland be called a Catholic country. It may sound strange, but that comes as a relief to me.
For years, those of us who are Catholic have been struggling against a notion that we are somehow part of a Catholic ‘establishment’, exercising great power and sway over the general populace.
As demonstrated in the recent referendum, nothing could be further from the truth. The picture painted by the media of the Catholic Church as a powerful oppressor is nothing more than a caricature – a cardboard cut-out version of Catholicism.
For years, every time we complained of being dominated by a biased and hostile media and establishment, we were met with jeers as if we were the ones calling the shots. Now the truth is plainly visible.
Since we are not living in a Catholic country – and there are fewer of us every year who can say that we ever did – the time seems ripe to reconsider the question of the separation of Church and State.
This is an idea that has been repeatedly deployed by so-called liberals as a justification for denouncing the Church for expressing views on moral issues that have become political. In other words, the Church should stay out of ‘State affairs’.
However, the separation of Church and state is not designed for the protection of the state; it is for the protection of the Church. History shows that when a Church becomes part of the fabric of a state, it is always the Church that suffers in the longer term.
Mirror
It is the mission of the Church to hold an often-unflattering mirror up to the world and, for this, she has always been at risk of falling foul of earthly powers.
In Ireland, thanks to the wisdom of our ancestors, the Catholic Church never became established as a State religion, even though the overwhelming majority of the population professed the Catholic faith.
Article 44 of the Constitution commits the State to respecting and honouring religion, but prohibits the State from endowing any religion and guarantees freedom of conscience and the free profession and practice of religion.
That said, from its very inception, the Irish State has always leaned heavily upon the Catholic Church. Historically, it was the Church that established and ran hospitals and schools, providing healthcare and education to a largely poor people.
Over time, these institutions have become subsumed into the architecture of an increasingly powerful State, although with the benefit of land and infrastructure owned and created by the Church. However, it is the State that now pays the salaries of the doctors and teachers and, as we all know, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Despite the constitutional protections – and we have all seen first-hand just how vulnerable these are – the State is increasingly hostile to the Church and to those who subscribe to the view that there is an objective morality, not dictated by the vagaries of current fashion.
More and more, those who adhere to the moral law are viewed, not merely as out of step with modernity, but as reprehensible, and the pace of this shift in opinion is only accelerating. In environments where the State is in control, such as schools and hospitals, there is little prospect for tolerance of the tenets of the Church or of those who accept them.
This is seen in every interaction with the Church’s detractors in government and the media who – unlike those of us who believe but may have criticisms, which we air out of love for the Church and a desire to see her flourish – criticise to shut down, to punish and to destroy. Yet what do we see happening every day?
Church leaders trying to pacify and placate those who will never make peace with the Church. Christ counselled us that if the world hates us, to remember that it hated him first. A priest or bishop who finds himself in favour with the secular powers needs to reflect on why this is so.
Protection
I think there is now a case to be made for the Church – for her own protection – to follow through fully on her separation from the Irish state. It is time for our bishops to stop propping up an edifice that is utterly hostile towards religious belief in general and Catholicism in particular.
While I believe in personal responsibility, and each of us is responsible for the decision we made in the voting booth, nonetheless the Church in Ireland needs to ask herself some long, hard questions. How can so many people who have received a Catholic education either not understand the moral gravity of voting in favour of abortion, or not care either way?
The vast majority of the leading proponents of abortion in the referendum were Catholic-educated. Most Catholic schools are now Catholic in name only. For at least two generations, they have failed to pass on the Faith, producing legions of atheists and only a handful of vocations to religious life.
We can carry on doing what we have been doing, but is it not now clear that it is not working? Might it not be better if we were to have fewer nominally Catholic – and more authentically Catholic – schools?
Parents would have to make an active choice to send their children to such schools; no-one could guarantee the presence of such a school on one’s doorstep. But the lesson of the referendum is that Catholicism is now a choice that has to be made, and made actively.
If the Church were now to close its schools, it could offer to sell some to the State upon payment of just compensation, using the proceeds to allow the establishment of a smaller number of private and authentically Catholic institutions. If the Church has a duty to educate anyone, it is a duty to educate in the Faith, not in an environment where the Faith is an afterthought or barely tolerated.
It is time too for the Church to get out of healthcare. With our Taoiseach saying that all State-funded hospitals must carry out abortions, the Church cannot be involved in the administration of such institutions.
Then we shall see just how well people like being cared for in institutions that reject Christian ethics for the ‘ethics’ of a culture that provides for the deliberate killing of innocent people.
And surely it is time for priests to stop doing the job of registrars in registering civil marriages, and rather put their efforts into preparing and supporting couples who actually want to engage in sacramental marriage.
For too long, our shepherds have failed properly to nourish their own flock. It is not merely a case that they have been feeding the sheep of another flock; they have been feeding the wolves. That needs to stop, now.